Lifted by the Swell

"I walk into the fire always, and come out more alive" -Anais Nin

Sober as a monk, I was dancing as aimlessly and enthusiastically as the beings high on LSD all around me. Flames shot up into the sky in time with the pounding bass, providing alluring bursts of heat for our shivering bodies. Damp grass twisted around our bare ankles as we twirled and stomped to the techno melody. I felt too hot and too cold. The music was too loud and yet too quiet. The other dancers were both too friendly and too aloof. The ecstatic moments when I recognized the song lyrics as they were punctuated by rockets of fire were counterbalanced by moments of profound despair as diminished chords rang out and I felt like I was the only human on earth dancing. And in those moments I had an epiphany. An epiphany born of sleep deprivation and spontaneity. Of loneliness and patchouli. Of propane and a dream. I wanted to feel every emotion in the spectrum. I wanted to stop avoiding moments of bliss because of the fear that grief would follow. I wanted to surrender to the experiential waves as they carried me from one extreme to the next. I wanted to be lifted by the swell.

...................

I used to believe in fairytales. That happiness follows the good and sorrow eventually catches up to the evil. I believed in fairytales until I was 6 years old. A tiny ugly princess fallen from grace, sobbing on the forest floor, holding her fractured ribs and trying to figure out what she'd done wrong. But the years spun by and no answer came. I packed away hope, tempered expectations, and learned to self-rescue. And yet, hope is an insidious flame, sparking out of an ember you thought had long ago died. Sparks ignited into a raging inferno when a wild, joyous man on a mountain ridge chose me out of the oblivion and taught me how to be loved. Dreams deferred began to crystallize on the horizon again as we planned a lifetime together. And then my world shattered again in the form of a pulse flickering out beneath my fingertips. The blood of my soulmate pooling around my kneeling form. My voice shredding as my screams disappeared into the void of unanswered prayers.

The torrent of initial grief, guilt, despair faded into a monotony of toneless apathy. The "I'm fine" color palette of emotions. A smile at a waterfall, a gasp at a majestic Mountain View, a laugh at a road trip gone awry filtered in here and there and gave the semblance of normalcy. But in the decade that followed my greatest loss, my rainbow of emotions had narrowed severely to a single hue. Especially when it came to relationships. After barely clawing my way back to sanity, I was terrified to fall in love again, lest I not find my way back after another inevitable loss. I met so many beautiful, incredible humans over the years, but could never offer them anything more then colloquial affection and raw lust. If I ever wandered too close to the edge, I would be plagued by night terrors of the thousand iterations of loss I imagined were looming.

And then I fell. Unclear how it happened. Whether it was a miracle of timing or just being caught off guard by a brain and heart as intoxicating and alien as my own, I will never know. With maturity I was able to allow myself to fall, but I controlled the descent as much as possible. I fought through the nightmares and moments of panic. I was proud of my progress, but at the same time, was always waiting for the other shoe to drop. The plot twist. The catch. And whether it was doomed from the onset or whether I manifested my greatest fear, things crumbled again. However, rather then losing my love in a fated final breath, I watched my dreams dissolve in slow motion at the altar of that banal bitch, rejection.

One week after my heart broke for the final time, I found myself dancing among throngs of other wild revelers in a chilly field. I hadn't seen anyone I knew for hours and I found a freedom in the anonymity. With music vibrating through my very soul, being cradled by a night air positively steeped in magic, when I stared into the bonfire's flames I could imagine I saw my reflection. In the ancient exothermic breaking of carbon bonds, I could glimpse a phoenix rising from the effigy's ashes. In that space between my breaths came the realization that I had survived. Again. The nightmares had come to life and I was still standing. The trail back to healing beckoned with an almost comforting familiarity with a promise for growth around every bend. And with those visions, my fear dissipated with the smoke over the distant forest canopy. I wanted to rejoin the world, embrace my next chance to fall and, instead, leap into it with abandon.

..............

In surfing, most of your time is spent staring out at the horizon, waiting for the perfect wave. Some people wait for hours, waiting for the perfect ride. Me, I will paddle after any wave that lifts me up and promises some excitement. The ride can be short or long, steep or mellow, but it must build in a way that promises a wild intensity. This indiscretion has led to some of the best and worst rides of my life. No single spectacular crash has ever made me question my strategy. And in life, now, I know that I have learned how to fall. How to get the breath knocked out of me, but turn back, face the whitewater and plunge back into the melee. Not that fear doesn't loiter around the edges. But each time I feel panic rise with the stirrings of a new attraction, I kneel down, feel for a pulse and let my hope be lifted by the swell.